Editor’s note: “Energy and Environmental
Policy” is a periodic column designed to
keep IDEA members up to date on important legislative and regulatory issues
affecting the district energy industry.

Many organizations want energy infrastructure that is low-carbon, reliable, resilient, efficient and cost-effective. These goals are
being pursued by colleges and universities, cities, real estate developers, thermal
and electric utility companies, and a wide
variety of service and manufacturing
businesses. Designing energy infrastructure to meet these multiple goals is a
challenge - but it is achievable. My objective in this column is to offer some advice
based on decades of experience.

Energy infrastructure decisions are
influenced by many factors, including
technical and economic analyses and projections of the future. Those decisions
are also made by human beings, so – let’s
be frank – they are also affected by other
considerations (What will my stakeholders say? Will I get criticized?). I want to
address some of the issues in an analytical
way but also acknowledge the other drivers of decisions. I also want to address the
difficulties in making decisions in the face
of uncertainties and suggest strategies
for building in flexibility to help “
future-proof” your energy infrastructure.

WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES?

I urge you to think hard and hon-estly about your goals. I recognize that“your” goals may refer to those of indi-vidual human beings or to the complexmix of motivations that occur in organiza-tions. Make the effort to dig deep on this.

What is motivating you or your organization? What really is important? “All of the
above” doesn’t count!

WHEN THE NEXT EXTREME WEATHER EVENT
OR MECHANICAL FAILURE INTERRUPTS
POWER SUPPLY, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO
CONTINUE TO SUPPLY POWER, HEAT AND
COOLING?

At the end of the day, reliability
should be number one: You want to meet
the requirements for heating, cooling and
electricity for the people you serve. Further, for an increasing number of organizations, resiliency is rapidly growing
in importance. When the next hurricane,
major storm or mechanical failure interrupts power supply, for two seconds,
two days or two weeks, will you be able
to bounce back and continue to supply
power, heat and cooling?

Carbon emissions loom large. Despite
national political paralysis, states, local
governments and the private sector understand the threat and are increasingly willing to act; and that includes spending capital, both financial and political, to reduce
carbon emissions.

Low-carbon energy tends to be local
energy, and there is a growing recognition
that using local resources helps build
local and regional economies. Spending
energy dollars with your neighbors rather
than sending those dollars to another
state or another country boosts jobs.

On the other hand, there is also theuncomfortable fact that organizationalgood intentions relative to carbon, resil-iency and other goals can wilt in theharsh light of economics.

In some quarters it is now fashion-able to disparage any use of fossil fuels(including natural gas, however efficientlyused) – and in some cases the combus-tion of anything, including biofuels. Thereis a narrative gaining currency that goeslike this: “Let’s just totally electrify ourenergy supply. After all, isn’t the gridgoing to become totally renewable, andthis will all be carbon-free?”In these polarized times, debatescan become instantly emotional andtweets can trump (pun intended) ratio-nal argument. So it is with some trepida-tion that I assert that the drive for fuel-free, all-electric infrastructure is in somecases unwise, particularly in the next20-plus years. This deserves some num-bers therapy.

ELECTRIC TECHNOLOGIES ARE NOTEMISSIONS-FREE

Let’s look at today’s power grids.
Apologies to Canada and other countries,
but I will use readily available data for
the U.S. to reduce the complexity of the
discussion.

The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency keeps a database called eGRID
(Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database) on emissions in each
region and subregion of the country. Figure 1 shows the major regions, based on
those designated by the National Electric Reliability Corp. 1 Figure 2 shows
eGRID subregions. To keep the subsequent graphs readable, I have chosen to
use data from the major regions, except